Topic: Butterfly Labs ASIC Gear Potential (Read 6983 times)

Don't forget to countdown the year till they come out....

http://www.cafepress.com/butterflylabs.559178306

Oh maybe it's a good thing we will get tools to compete with him!

Makes me want to buy one of these in the meantime while I wait for these beasts.  I wonder if I buy ten of those can I trade it in for a Jalapeno for the upgrade plan they are offering?  Hmm.. maybe I need to get these instead since they are technically "coffee warmers" like the Jalapeno. 

Because mining is volatile and unsure.

Some ASIC developers, like Vlad, ARE going that route though.

hmm if BFL have this tech, why are they selling to the public when greater profits could be made by mining themselves?
at least first then sell later..?

NOOOO Bitlane! You've never watched propaganda video. Civilization as we know it would end!


Sorry for being off topic had to though


Futurama: I Dated A Robot!
http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/48647/detail/

That would be an epic music video. Anyone have an reddit clout? I'm sure someone on there would do it. +1

Someone needs to do a ASIC killed the GPU Star remake of Video Killed the Radio Star.

Sex Robots will be the end of Marriage/Valentines Day....

Every disruptive technology (even within another disruptive eco-sphere like bitcoin) is usually declared as "the end of < insert previous tech >, dooming the < insert current status quo >". Assuming for one moment that BFL's claims are true, all we're witnessing here is the steady march of progress.

Radio/records were going to doom live performances.

Video recorders were going to be the end of TV/Movies.

FPGA is going to be the end of bitcoin.

See the pattern? Technology adoption evolves in ways that we can't easily predict, to the benefit of everyone.

Lets say everyone rushes and buys, produces a metric crap-ton of coins, prices oscillate wildly - hell, even get down to the $2 level -- this won't end bitcoin. I'd say that a lot of people would come out of the woodwork to grab some more. (yet *another* chance for all the disenfranchised 'I only heard about bitcoin a few months ago' people.) No? It happened late last November 2011. This isn't the end, in fact, as some have noted - it will turn the already powerful hashing network into an even more formidable force.

I understand the concerns of %51+ hash-attack, etc., but we've been at those crossroads before, and we haven't seen abuse. I don't personally have the funds to pursue this technology, but I have no problem with the increase of collective hashing power, as I see it strengthening the network overall.

I'm not sure about the BFL claims. However, this just seems like the natural progression of this experiment we call Bitcoin. As the network and technology improve/expand you will have whole companies setup to designing/manufacturing/maintaining Bitcoin related hardware/services. Already starting to see companies receive additional funding. CPU's and GPU's made a great starting point for the network because they are readily available off-the-shelf components and fairly cheap as well. As the idea was tested and it started to grow people started looking at optimizing the efficiency of mining. Then came along FPGA's and now BFL has introduced the next step. A custom processor/hardware platform solely designed for Bitcoin mining. This would allow it to achieve maximum efficiency and processing power because it is a specialized device ie. you don't have to make design compromises to suit another application like you do with CPU's, GPU's and a lesser extent FPGA's.  

This doesn't mean I don't hold some reservations about BFL's claims. The prices seems low for such great hardware (on paper) but as some other forum members pointed out they could be trying to  corner the market. It's not uncommon (PS2, PS3, Xbox, etc). They could also charge for firmware/software upgrades to further improve the mining efficiency of the units along with technical support for their hardware. I remember working for a company that sold hardware at cost but charged an obscene amount for the software (lots of mathematics/algorithms for optimal efficiency). Anytime a new market emerges it's best to get in early and big or risk being pushed to the way side.

Edit: So after a bit of reading in the FPGA section this thread sums up what I'm talking about and more. Good fundemental ASIC talk about pros/cons of ASIC mining and how it will effect the Bitcoin now and the future. Title is misleading.

ASIC = The end of decentralized mining
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/asic-the-end-of-decentralized-mining-87303

interesting times, indeed. it seems ot me there are valid arguments in at least three different directions from all this... some good for bitcoin over all, some bad, some with a rough patch that ultimately leaves everything roughly where it is now...

too many variables and not enough solid information. any action taken now could be the wrong one, it seems ot me.

You're right. I misread, my apologies.

You talk to us about reading comprehension, and you can't even be bothered to make your own sentences readable with the use of a smattering of punctuation? Sure.

And you lack reading comprehension I say plainly that 8x is 1.75 days and 4x is 3.5.

Edit: And the second 4x is as I have said 2x new diff so it is 7 days.

I bet they sell a lot of more small units which jack up the difficulty before the first 1THz comes online. But I don't know how much the difficulty will change.

Folks need to remember that diff re-targets are every 2016 blocks. 100,800 BTC per re-target interval, regardless of how long it takes to complete that interval. (Until reward drop, then it will halve of course)

Quit talking about the number of days for it to go up.. if the amount of hash goes up by an 8 fold and blocks are being found 8x as fast, diff will rise at a rate of 4x per 2016 blocks until it is caught up.  So if normal diff is 14 days, then 8x is just under 2 days.  Not 7.  You lack certain understandings of the fundamentals and its affecting any sort of estimation or predictions you make.

What's stopping the FR from utilizing supercomputers for the task?  Or from building their own ASIC?  Or from buying 100,000 video cards?

Nothing.

The best thing we can do is exactly what is happening - get as many ASICs into the hands of everyone who is a proponent of Bitcoin to defend against everyone who isn't.  To say that publicly available ASICs are against the core idea of Bitcoin is to say that you want Bitcoin to be attacked by people with lots of money.

Well the scenario is this in massive diff increase of 4x in the ~3.5 days it takes to happen you have 28,800 coins a day being produced for that time period if that massive increase is actually an 8x times in disguise as the diff cannot rise that much, then 57,600 coins a day in the first 1.75 and 14,400 in the remaining time until next diff change is being produced as that second 4x is in actuality a 2x new diff so 7 days for that.

And this means all things being even, difficulty would increase or drop by whatever percentage beyond the intended 300 BTC per hour (6 blocks).   You have to keep this in mind when we try and build this conceptual model of "what the world is going to be like with ASIC (like going from 286's to Pentium II).     I have spent so many hours playing out different scenarios in my head.